We think we need to obtain every single yield on our land - all for us and only us. The problem is that we depend on nature and the entire ecosystem to cycle water, nutrients, etc. If you looked at a 10 foot x 10 foot plot of land with a human on it, maybe a quadrillionth of 1 percent of the living mass on that plot is human (exaggeration alert - do not take literally). So why should the human get 100% of the yield? Hell, our bodies are only 43% human by cell count. The other 57% is symbiotic microbiology that lives inside us.

I think having a paradigm shift in your thinking is very important to having a healthy sustainable garden (i.e. ecosystem). We tend to think very "industrial agriculture" in our backyard plots. Industrial agriculture is rife with problems.

For example, aphids take a tomato plant down? Awesome.

What?

Yes, awesome. Leave them.

Why?

If you remove them, you remove the food for the ladybugs. How do you expect to ever have ladybugs if you systematically remove their food source? Isn't that kind of exactly what you would do if your mastermind plan was to sabotage them? Remove their food?

We need to think "okay, that weak-ass tomato plant is getting donated to the aphids". They are the lions attacking the weak gazelle.

But then I will have aphids everywhere?!!

No, you won't, and here's why.

If you remove the pests, you will have more pests. If you don't remove them, you will have fewer (provided they have a natural predator of course (screw you, Japanese beetle)).

If you remove the pest, good job. You just removed all the ladybug food. You are telling nature "I've got this. I'm the ladybug". Guess what happens? They already laid eggs, so you removed one generation of aphids. Next spring the next ones hatch and you have no predators, because YOU are the predator. So now you have aphids everywhere again. You remove them again. Next spring, the next generation hatches, you have aphids everywhere again.

Now, what if we have a paradigm shift in our thinking? Lets LEAVE them. Lets donate that plant to them - for the price of a healthy ecosystem.

Aphids cover that plant and threaten a few others. Ladybugs move in, because all your neighbours remove their aphids. Your land is the only foodsource for them all around. They see this ample aphid fiesta, and they lay eggs in your soil for their children to grow up on this "fertile oasis". You remove some of, but not all of the aphid infected plants.

The next spring, overwintered aphids hatch, but this time, they are met by the next generation of ladybugs who also hatched - who solve the problem before it gets out of control. Sure you will see some aphids here and there. They will take down a few leaves on a plant. You may see a string of them crawling up the weakest tomato plant. But this is needed if you want balance. Balance doesn't mean eradication, it means balance. The price is one weak tomato plant. The benefit is an in-situ 24/7 garden security force.

We need to stop thinking we have ownership of every plant on our property. We need to be okay losing one or two, if it means we create a healthy ecosystem. Then we overplant to compensate for this. We plant in dense polycultures. We plant some wildflower patches. We plant borders of perennial kale and clover for the rabbits so they don't eat our lettuce. Here it is in action. When we do this, we get the benefit from them (their fertility they leave behind), but we don't lose our prize crops. We put in bird baths so they don't drill holes in our tomatoes looking for water. They now instead drink from the bird bath, and the benefit for that small price is that they are now an enchanced garden security team. The SWAT team. They know we are their friend, and they now land on our hands, and follow us around as we putter around the garden. They can sense we aren't adversarial, we are one of them. Part of the ecoystem.

We leave a wasp nest up if it's not in our direct walking path. Suddenly we find ourselves changing. We see a wasp and last year we thought "stupid wasps, I hate wasps so much", but now we find our enlightened selfs thinking:

"hello garden buddy. You are an asshole, but you are an indescriminant asshole. You are equally assholish to all things, including all my enemies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Hello friend".

(forgive the profanity, but this IS a rant after all).

Look at you, you are evolving infront of our very eyes.

As soon as we stop treating our home garden like a capitalistic profit and greed-driven corporation, frothing at the mouth to maximize every single penny, steal from everyone and give back to nobody, take take take, kill this, kill that, eradicate this, grow in a dead sterile environment where all competition is stomped under our boot.... nature just doesn't work like that. And when we plant like that, we have systems requiring constant inputs. When we destroy something (say herbicide, pesticide, etc), then WE have to replace the function that those performed in the ecosystem. Or stuff dies.

When we kill things, we create systems of inputs. Home depot won't mind selling you remedy after remedy for all the stuff you are killing and all the imbalance you are causing.

Long rant, this is my passion - clearly. So ask yourself...

What's worse? Losing a tomato plant here and there, but growing in a zero maintenance wild gardening permaculture ecosystem sustainable method? Or spending hundreds of dollars and growing that single $200 tomato that makes you quit gardening because it's "so hard".

We just need to realize, we're the small fry here. We're insignificant in the grandeur of nature and natural ecosystems. We need to sow our seeds, sow enough for everyone, leave some for nature, and harvest our modest share of it. But then we need to step back and remove ourselves from the equation and let nature sort it out.

That $200 tomato just became a free tomato, because you saved seeds. You aren't buying 10-10-10 fertilizer. You aren't spraying pesticide and neem oil. You aren't spend spend spend, input input input. You are composting, and mulching, and saving seeds. That's it.

You know what else? You aren't hate hate hate. You see aphids, but you no longer see "AH PESTS!", you see "ahh... free ladybug food". You are no longer having a high stress, negativity breeding adversarial relationship with nature. You are a mother fking hobbit. You are unshakable. You are at peace. You are serenity embodied.

Gardening now is saving and making you money, it's saving and feeding the ecosystem you live in. You are now a net positive force in the world, you are the sower of food, the bringer of life, you have risen and evolved. You are no longer the bringer of death.

You just need to take that one small step in realizing... this isn't all yours.

I completely agree with one exception. Flea beetles. Those jerks go for my eggplants every year and they get the diatomaceous earth. This year I'm planning to plant mustard nearby and see if they like it better because apparently nothing in my yard wants to eat them. But I, too, love sustainable gardening and allowing the plants and bugs (and birds, bats, snakes, etc) to do their thing.

The best thing is when it all gets working, it's so little effort. You can actually enjoy your garden instead of googling what to go buy to solve the newest problem.

There are a handful of pests where this kind of doesn't apply. Anything without a predator, or anything where their hiding is so good that they really can't be controlled and will cause utter devastation. A short list is:

Japanese beetles (no natural predator)

Squash Vine borers (quickly become inaccessible by the predator)

Emerald ash borers (quickly become inaccessible by the predator)

Flea beetles (no natural predator)

The solution to ALL of these is tough, but it's the only sustainable way - DON'T PLANT THAT STUFF.

It sucks, but that's the correct solution. So, squash vine borers are impossible to control? Plant acorn squash instead. They are so tough the borers can't get in. Maybe try a butternut here and there, but if you lose them, snip them ground level, and try again in 2-3 years, but focus on acorn squash for now and trade with neighbours.

Ash trees getting decimated? Cut them down (hard, I know) and plant oaks, maples, fruit trees, etc in their place. Maybe try again in a few decades when the ecosystem adjusts - but check with local ministry of environment before you do.

I know it sucks, but that's the only way. Similar to how we sabotaged the ladybugs by removing the aphids (their food source), the best way to deal with something like squash vine borers is to remove their foodsource, and just move on and plant what works well. Maybe try again in a few years and see how it goes then. But take a few seasons off and remove their food.

I hear chicken and duck combo works great, but not everyone can bring in Muskovies to solve their problems.

Surprisingly, I collect 2000 leaf bags each season and I don't really get slug problems. I had some eating my strawberries, so my solution was to plant more strawberries. I didn't have them that bad though to be honest.

Things I DON'T believe work:

Bricks, broken glass, crushed eggshells, etc. Anything that hopes to lacerate them. I just think this is silly, because I see these things crawling over bricks and woodchips and sharp stuff all the time. I don't think they get disemboweled. I think this is a common myth (but feel free to prove me wrong if anyone has experience in these working). I think it "makes sense" and that's what spread it - but I don't think it works.

Beer in a jar. This may work, but boy would that be a lot of work.

What I found works (my personal experience)...

Wherever you have the worst problem with slugs, put down a piece of plywood. In the morning, go lift up the plywood. Every slug in the neighbourhood will be undernearth it. This is the perfect night time environment for the slug to chill out under. Now take these slugs and feed them to chickens, or what have you. Again, as per the above email, try to keep some alive, you want some, just not slugs crawling up your house. Don't eradicate them, but feel free to "thin" them a bit.

Compost as mulch versus woodchip mulch. Charles Dowding is a great youtuber, and he's from England. He uses compost as actual mulch layer for this exact reason (slugs). If he uses shredded leaves or woodchips he apparently gets tons of slugs. So take this with a grain of salt, but you could consider using compost as "mulch'.

That being said, compost as mulch doesn't really make sense to me, because that's kind of perfect soil. So it's basically uncovered soil. I.e. the soil life moves up into it, then get nuked by the sun UV. Water will evaporate more. I suspect this only works for him because of how humid his climate is, and evaporation isn't a major concern. Still, I would avoid using "soil" as "mulch". I don't really like the idea of compost as mulch. I feel it's too "bare soil" for me. I'm a woodchip guy though, through and through, so take that as you may. I'm extremely biased against bare soil. I think it's #1 mistake people make, possibly tied with tilling.

I've even seen people say such stupidity as spreading salt throughout the garden to dry the slugs up. Really? Isn't there a saying for that... salting the earth? Talk about Class A level stupidity!!

So, in the end, if you don't want ducks (and the glorious chaos and grazing they will do on every plant you have - just ask Jack Spirko from Survival Podcast), or running chickens between rows, then you may want to try to plywood thing to keep them under control.

Remember, slugs like dark damp environment, so any steps you can make to remove that kind of habitat is going to help with slugs. Proper pruning and increasing airflow through your crops can possibly help.

Awesome, thank you so much. I'll have to try the plywood thing near my tomatoes. It certainly won't get rid of all of them, but it will keep their numbers in check by my tomatoes. To be honest, if they would all eat a whole tomato or two together I wouldn't mind in the least. Unfortunately they prefer taking a bite out of each one. As far as mulch goes, the hazelnut growers sell bags of shells for that purpose. I agree that this doesn't cut them or anything like that, but I think its uncomfortable and if they have other readily available food (and they will) they should be less inclined to cross it.

Soil life is what breaks apart the soil aggregates using acids, and makes it bioavailable to the plants. The nutrient is there, the plant just can't access it. The soil food web is how plants feed themselves.

When you till, you nuke the entire soil food web of life. It takes a full year for it to recover. So when you till as a practice, you will never recover.

Soil dries and cracks and can't hold moisture. Soil actually turns hydrophobic and water doesnt penetrate into the soil anymore, it sits on top like water on a plate. Soil life beneath dies back more without access to sufficient water.

Soils are easily compacted now also, and become anaerobic. Roots can't push through, water can't push through, air can't get down.

Any rain sits on top and evaporation takes over and is brutal. If there is any incline, the water sheets across on top of the land and washes microscopic amounts of topsoil along with it. This is why ditches un heavy rains in industrial tilled counties is all brown and muddy. That is literally the topsoil washing away.

Instead, the focus needs to be entirely on soil life. Stop worrying about this years plant and instead focus on next years soil. Everything you do should maximize life in your soil.

That means you need to stop disturbing it by tilling. Stop breaking apart all the fungal mycelium network. Then also mulch heavily and protect the soil from the suns UV. Mulch also helps regulate temperatures, reducing mod day highs, and raising nighttime lows. It also prevents evaporation.

Fungal mycelium explodes and connects plants together, transfers nutrients to help balance soil chemistry, and holds water. Soil life explodes and worms pull nutrient down lower and lower. Roots get deeper and deeper, because they dont need to sprawl across the surface to get water. More fine root hairs are developed instead of high energy low input seeker roots. All plants thrive because they must balance upper and lower mass, so more roots are "doing work" now, instead of finding and exploring.

I could go on and on. I didn't talk about water retention of loam soils, didnt talk about biochar amendments, did not talk about studies on plant communication through mycelium networks to warn against pests and secrete pheromones to attract predators proactively.

I could go on for days kn how important and impactful tilling and mulching is. And it almost all revolves around mushrooms and fungal networks. Mushrooms are the MVP linchpins keystone kingdom of the entire planet.